“In a time we are inundated with news and it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between true and false news, the Media Day 2017 calls us to think of the good news”, mgr. Gebhard Fürst, bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and president of the Media Committee of the German Bishops Conference (Dbk), writes in the run-up to the 51st World Day for Social Communication of on September 10th, which Germany has been celebrating since 1967 on the second Sunday in September. Repeatedly mentioning Pope Francis’s recent message, in his message mgr. Fürst calls everyone to “defeat with a positive message the many negative headlines, fear and uncertainty. Yes, we have a duty to spread hope and confidence in our time without hiding the truth”. In this respect, “the ecclesial media have a special responsibility”, the bishop writes: while they are ruled by the “laws of market”, they should “place good news before bad news”. The Media Sunday, the bishop goes on, “calls us, as a Church in Germany and as a Church in the world, to think of our duty to communicate in the Church and in the world: we have a message that must not be left between the walls of churches but must be taken out”. “Public opinion, especially the secular one, awaits such voice”, so that, mgr. Fürst concludes, information may be “constructive communication”, which, once received by the recipient, can “become a dialogue”.
